Michigan Tech researchers have been awarded a NASA grant to study ways to extract
water from gypsum rock on Mars, bringing a human trip to the red planet closer to
reality.

Jeffrey Allen is the principal investigator on a project that has received $200,000
first-year funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Paul van
Susante, Ezequiel Medici and Timothy Eisele are co-principal investigators on the
project, “Low Mass, Low Power, Non-Mechanical Excavation of Gypsum and Other Evaporites
and Water Production on Mars.”

NASA awards Early Stage Innovation grants to help scientists do fundamental, preliminary
research to test ideas and advance new technologies. This two-and-a-half-year project,
funded for a total of $500,000, will investigate whether robots sent to Mars can use
powerful jets of water to excavate gypsum, blast the rocks to disintegrate them, and
heat the gypsum particles to release the water bound within mineral’s crystal structure.
This could be a way to expeditiously make more water and oxygen for human consumption
and to make rocket fuel on Mars.

This work aims to create a way for NASA (or a space exploration contractor) to send
humans to Mars with enough water, oxygen and rocket fuel for the trip out, knowing
that there will be enough water, oxygen and rocket fuel waiting on Mars for the astronauts
to use on their trip home to Earth.

Breaking It Down

If mining machinery breaks down on Earth, fixing the problem is expensive, but it’s
also just a phone call away. There are no mechanics on Mars; therefore, coming up
with a way to mine that causes the least wear on machines was the starting point for
a project occurring millions of miles away.

“How could you mine hard rock knowing these machines have to operate for many years
without maintenance?” asks van Susante, senior lecturer in mechanical engineering-engineering
mechanics and faculty advisor to the Mining Innovation Enterprise (MINE) team. “The
problem is the metal that exerts the force to break the rock. Metal wears down or
breaks off, requiring maintenance. We’re trying to eliminate that part of it. We came
up with idea to use a water jet, or some other gas or liquid, that we can spray at
high pressure at the rock. It’s a new idea in space that hasn’t been proposed before.”

Tim Eisele, left, and Paul van Susante, right, are investigating how to extract water
(and byproduct plaster of Paris) from gypsum, a technique they hope will be used on
Mars to make water, oxygen, and rocket propellant for astronauts.

Working with Tim Eisele, assistant professor of chemical engineering and endowed faculty
fellow, and students from the MINE team, van Susante is creating a sealed chamber
in the Ore Separation Laboratory and Benedict Laboratory equipped with water jets
to disintegrate gypsum samples. The second step is to transport the resulting slurry
for separation to remove suspended particles and supply the water back to the pressure
washer.

Their plan is to feed water back into the system until there is a surplus, at which
point the water will be stored. The water can then be separated and combined with
carbon from the Martian atmosphere to create methane for rocket fuel and liquid oxygen
is a byproduct .

One of the more puzzling aspects of the project is determining how to best create
a seal between the chamber and ground to trap heat, increase pressure and minimize
water loss—a tricky proposition on the rough surface of the red planet. This and other
aspects will be tested under simulated Martian conditions. Ezequiel Medici, research
assistant professor and instructor in mechanical engineering-engineering mechanics,
will model thermal and fluid interactions between the regolith—soil lacking organic
compounds—and subsurface of the ground.

Other factors that are difficult to predict include the distances robots would have
to travel between the excavation site and storage areas. To put the current difficulties
of travel on Mars in perspective, all of the rovers have traveled approximately 26
miles—a literal marathon on tiny treads. Put simply, the shorter the distance the
better, to keep robots producing water and components for fuel.

“Our goal is to do this with the minimum amount of energy and the minimum amount of
mass,” van Susante says.

The team hopes to achieve a production rate of disintegrating four to five kilograms
of gypsum per hour. At that rate, oxygen, water and propellant tanks are estimated
to be ready and waiting for humans, approximately 480 Mars days (known as sols) after
the production robots land on Mars.

A Mission with Moxie

NASA plans to send the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE)
mission to Mars in 2020 to demonstrate oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere.
The fundamental research the team at Michigan Tech is doing, along with related research
at other universities, needs to work out the kinks in the system to extract water
on Mars for the methane production for future demonstration and human missions to
Mars.

“Why do we care about this? The reason we care is because rocket fuel is such a huge
amount of the rocket,” van Susante says. “Of any rocket you send to space, 88 percent
of that rocket’s mass is fuel—enough fuel just to get from here to low-Earth orbit.
That means the 12 percent you have left must include the fuel to get to Mars, to the
surface of Mars, back off the surface of Mars, and back Earth. It’s like going from
New York to LA and you have to bring everything with you—the air, the food, the gasoline—and
you’re not allowed to use anything around you; no pit stops!”

This means manufacturing air, water and fuel at the mission destination. It is van
Susante’s hope that by the mid-2030s—a mere 15 years from now—humans will land on
the surface of Mars.

Michigan Technological University is a public research university, home to more than
7,000 students from 54 countries. Founded in 1885, the University offers more than
120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering,
forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, and
social sciences. Our campus in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula overlooks the Keweenaw Waterway
and is just a few miles from Lake Superior.

About the Author

Kelley Christensen

Kelley writes university research stories and articles for university publications.
She studied news-editorial journalism and American literature at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln and holds a master's in technical communication from Montana Tech.
She is pursuing her doctorate in environmental policy at Michigan Tech.